Whaling adventure with top two

preflop 4bet size seems horrifically small.

Flop is whatever.

Turn would probably call down the 100+100, unless we boat up.

I'd assume he doesn't have 33 all the time, but wouldn't be shocked to see at least 1 combo ... KJ seems possible, so if we are thinking about putting the last 130ish in we have to wonder how often he has that vs. AT/QT/A3 or random bluffs that will fold if we raise.

I’m looking to get all the money in here and the only way to do that is to raise the turn. Make it $200 and take it from there. If he has you beat, it’s just unlucky.

Based on the K6 hand history and the Villain description, you can easily get all the money in here against AJ. And then of course there are worse two pair combos too, maybe AK every once in a while.

Agreed that you should 4bet larger. Probably needed to get more money in with QQ too.

So there's a kind of a GTO thing going on ... as the raise size gets bigger the player calling "should" fold more, and robots do, so the raiser is also bluffing less and with blockers (Eg. sims with live 4x+ open sizes robots fold way more than most humans).

The whale is very likely to be spew raising way too wide, so the 3bet size to 10 is closer to correct. But the whale is very unlikely to be folding correctly (I've seen random whales call a 4bet shove with like 98s, and call big 3bets with A5s) ... so you don't need/want to 4bet small. Yes, your hand is "face up" as good ... but it probably is for your $30 4bet anyway, and whale is getting a _much_ better price at 30 than 80.

In general I'd be trying to find a size that makes V think about what to do with a lot of his range ... and when you make it $30 I think he autocalls everything.

You’re playing whales, I’d go huge pre. They’re calling anyways.

Turn is close but I think we just raise and try to gii. Call call is fine too.

Yeah, if the argument for raising bigger is that the whales still call way too wide, I'm on board.

I am a little skeptical that's true for an $80 raise though - keep in mind that V2 is the other whale and is only in for $4 so far, and I don't really feel like V1 is going to sit for an 8x raise. But you might be right, especially in light of the (not known to me at the time) hand where he is in for $20 and flat calls for $240 more with, allegedly, KQs.

In general, there should be a point where your raise starts giving back EV because the whale calling frequency shrinks too much (even if it is always wider than GTO), and if there's disagreement here it's probably just on what the whale's ranges look like calling a variety of raise sizes. I might be off-mark for these players in particular, but across my fairly diverse pool I will 3b pretty large (less than 8x) OOP and this frequently buys pots even from loose fish.

The key to me here is that in the previous hand when you showed aggression, he still called down. So, I just call here & see the river. The river can certainly change the nuts on this board, so let’s see it.

I’ve never played in a game where someone made a $4 bet and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a $30 4Bet, so this is strange to me. Flop bet is also too small.

Sometimes I think in the quest to get value, we keep hands in that can jump up and beat us. I like the idea of targeting a strong 2nd best hand & winning big when they have it. If I fold them out along the way, that’s fine too.

I would arrive on this turn with a much bigger pot, so I don’t know if he’d donk me?

With the AQs I would probably 4bet to $45 or $50 in game but I like illiterat's idea of going huge to $80 too.

In the QQ hand, I think 3betting the flop small isn't a bad idea. Even clicking it to $40 could be good. I don't think he folds TP or a flush draw to that sizing. If you don't do that, I think the turn XR just has to be bigger than 2.5x. Maybe XR to $75 or even $100. I certainly understand the temptation to raise small to keep the whale in though, especially when you don't have all the info yet about how truly OOL he is.

Now that I think about it though, making the pot bigger on earlier streets isn't as important in this game format as in true NL because your river bet is always going to be capped at $100.

At the table, I was far on the cautious end of the votes here. After the first HH and then stacking V (all-in KK vs KQ pre), I made a mental note he was probably on tilt to get it back and eager to cooler me. I was pretty confident this donk was for value made on the turn, as I felt he wouldn't have the patience not to start OTF unless the turn impacted his decision. But this is 12 combos of AT and QT against 16 of KJ, a smidge of TT, and the persistent chance he's somehow decided to blast off with something random, and the betting structure strongly protects our odds.

Hero calls.

River ($346): As Qd 3s Tc Kh

Villain leads for another $100, Hero sigh calls.

My general approach to playing whales / maniacs is to try to get as much money as possible into the pot, as soon as possible, whenever I'm reasonably sure I have the best hand, and otherwise just play pot control, because their ranges are so wide.

Only as an aside - whales and maniacs aren't the same. Whales are the ultimate loose-passive fish. They call too much. Maniacs are ultra LAG, they bet / raise too much. These guys sound more like maniacs than whales, as described.

PRE - I think it's fine.

We can debate raising larger. I think AQs is a tad cuspy to play as a big 4B if we get called, and it would suck if we get 5B.

FLOP - This is where I think we went astray by c-betting ridiculously small. I'd have over-bet.

They're not folding any AX or QXss combos on the flop. They may not fold any draws at all. They may not fold any QX at all. When they're calling too wide pre, they get to the flop with so many more hands we can target for value.

If they have something stupid like 76hh or 22, those hands are folding if we breathe on the pot. We should just target the top of their range with a chunky c-bet.

TURN - Yuck.

This is the problem with betting so small on the flop. We gave them good implied odds to continue wide. I'm not folding top 2P, but I'm hating this spot.

RIVER - Honestly, this is a pretty trivial fold.

There's a one-liner to a J on board. Even if our read is that V is maniacal and over-bluffing, he donked for the max on the turn, and we called. He's not bluffing or betting worse for value on the river. I don't care how maniacal he is.

Opponents tend to bluff when we give them rope. We didn't give V any rope here. We raised pre, c-bet the flop, and called his turn donk. Even a maniac is going to look for spots to apply pressure when our range is likely to be capped at 1P and he can have all the random 2P+. Here, we're not capped, and aren't scared of his random 2P.

Even if he's over-playing a hand that isn't JX, he could be "bluffing" with a better hand, like TT.

Smaller flop bets have the advantage of flexibility, in particular being able to bail if the future bets get too hot.

With pseudo-NL spread limit you can more easily destroy the implied odds by betting bigger on flops. (And even here, the $30 to win $320 is about break even for him) Perhaps the result would be almost the same but I think you can go ham on the flop when you hit tptk+, or maybe even with less vs whales